Guide to Instagram e-commerce updates 2019

Instagram has over 800 million users and states that over 200 million daily users visit one business profile on Instagram each day. They also note that 2 in 3 visits to business profiles are from non-followers, meaning even if you don’t have a lot (or any) Instagram followers, people still look use your profile as a quick way to window shop. Through 2018, Instagram has made several significant ecommerce updates. We’ve rounded them up below to help you get your Instagram e-commerce marketing setup for 2019.

Shopping Tags roll out in Canada

For years, online retailers on Instagram only had their profile link as a way to drive followers to their site. In 2017, Instagram launched “Shopping Tags” in the States. This lets business profiles tag images with the name and price of items in their post. Clicking the tag takes you to a product page, which links out to the page where the item can be purchased. In March 2018, this feature rolled out internationally, including Canada.

Shop Tab on Business Pages

his also includes a “Shop” tab on business profiles, where people can quickly browse a selection of items without leaving the app. This feature saw a redesign last month for quicker viewing.

Shopping Tags in Stories

Instagram Stories were an Instant hit when launched in 2016, now seeing up to 400 million daily users of that specific feature. As a promotional and ad platform, it’s also been well-received by users, with a third of the most viewed stories coming from businesses (assuming the video or animated content used is tailored to it). As of June 2019, you can tell a short story about your product, with a tag linking to buy it.

Shopping Tags in Videos

In November, shopping tags were introduced to videos. While not actual tags like in image posts and Stories, videos will show a shopping icon that when clicked will display the tags.

Explore Page Shopping Channel

Following up from topic channels being added to the top of the Explore feature, a dedicated shopping channel has been added. Similar to the Explore channels that curate posts based on who you follow and your interested and activities, but in this case, they’re all shoppable.

Shopping Collection

To complement the shopping tag, the Shopping Collection was added in November as well. After clicking a shopping tag, a user can either click through to the online store or click the save icon. This saves the item along with your saved posts in its own shopping section, in case you somehow resisted impulse buying it right away.